PIBROCH

The MacCrimmon legend

Clan chiefs from all over the Highland and islands allegedly sent their best pipers to the MacCrimmons who, the legend has it, ran a famous piping college at Borreraig on Skye for 300 unbroken years.

Angus MacKay

To help discerning pipers evaluate the worth of Angus MacKay, the text in this link has been replaced with the text from part three of the four-part Radio Scotland series, Pibroch, the Tangled Web, called "Angus MacKay -- Messiah or Madman?"

Pibroch

Pibroch is the opera of the bagpipe, singing to us in a single voice of the Celtic people. Of their loves and hate, their joys and sorrows, their grief at death and their sweet delight at birth, of all the emotions that bind a people, for it always was the music of the people.

Pibroch Styles

Pibroch came down to us in two distinct schools or styles of playing, called the Cameron and the MacPherson styles, or schools.

The Old Masters

"...the pibrochs handed down by these dedicated musicians differed entirely from the guff which was being foisted on pipers. And no-one knew where the distortions came from."

The Piobaireachd Society

"Highland aristocracy flocked to join... What must be stressed is that the members were sincere about supporting pibroch, and had little or no idea of what was being done in their names."

Sausage Fingers and Bones

These were the derisive nicknames of the two despotic lairds who falsified the music. Both were so self-inflated they somehow asserted they were greater authorities on pibroch than the master pipers who "taught" them.

The Old Masters 2

The collaboration led to the perfected scores of our national music being written into the real book, page by page, by these two musicians, leaving behind a record of our authentic pibroch deriving in an unbroken line from John MacKay, an unparalleled treasure house of the Scottish nation’s music.

John Macdonald, the accomplice

He wrote a series of damning letters blaming Arch. Campbell for altering the music but inadvertently disclosed he had taught his pupils differently from the way he himself taught.

Omega

The reason For Campbell-K's desperation over the redundant A was simple. He didn't understand a word of if. How could a note exist when you couldn't hear it?

The manners of the Moguls

The first Ghadar conspiracy trial opened in March 1915 at Lahore where Campbell-K had been promoted registrar of the Punjab Chief Court three years earlier. Twenty-four men were sentenced to be hanged when their leader, aged only 19, was asked to plead for clemency. He refused and was executed.

Robert Reid, King of Pipers

Every time he played in public he proved the Piobaireachd Society wrong - the reason why hey tried to blacken his name and obliterate his memory.

'A farewell blessing of the pipes'

He asked Sandy if he could take a dram and put his bagpipes on the bed beside him while he poured out the drinks and when he turned back he found Old Sandy had been running hishands up and down the drones. Perhaps it was a sort of farewell blessing. Who can say?